Sibley v. Culliver
| Decision Date | 21 July 2004 |
| Docket Number | No. 03-11604.,03-11604. |
| Parties | George Everette SIBLEY, Jr., Petitioner-Appellant, v. Grantt CULLIVER, Warden Donal Campbell, Commissioner, Alabama Department of Corrections, Respondents-Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit |
Bryan A. Stevenson (Court-Appointed), Equal Justice Initiative of AL, Cathleen I. Price (Court-Appointed), Montgomery, AL, for Petitioner-Appellant.
Nathan A. Forrester, Birmingham, AL, Beth Jackson Hughes, Montgomery, AL, for Respondents-Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama.
Before TJOFLAT, ANDERSON and BIRCH, Circuit Judges.
George Sibley Jr., along with his wife, Lynda Lyon-Sibley, were convicted of capital murder on October 4, 1993 and sentenced to death.1 Though Sibley consistently refused the assistance of counsel on appeal and did not file any briefs pro se, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals examined the trial record "to determine whether he validly waived counsel, whether there was sufficient evidence at trial to support his conviction, and whether he was properly given the death penalty."2 On March 21, 1997, it affirmed his conviction. See Sibley v. State, 775 So.2d 235 (Ala.Crim.App.1996).
On April 20, 2000, the Sibleys mailed several members of Congress a "petition for orders commanding release from unlawful restraint of liberty." It declared that they were imprisoned because of a vast conspiracy involving the American Bar Association, the Alabama Bar Association, and the Alabama court system, apparently dedicated to suppressing the existence of the "true" Thirteenth Amendment, which has something to do with titles of nobility. "Since lawyers and judges accept the titles `Esquire' and `The Honorable,' it is argued they are not citizens and the entire judicial system is illegal."3
In the meantime, the Alabama Supreme Court appointed an attorney to appeal the judgment of the court of criminal appeals on Sibley's behalf. Sibley repeatedly objected to this appointment. On May 12, 2000, after considering the attorney's arguments, the Alabama Supreme Court affirmed Sibley's conviction. Ex parte Sibley, 775 So.2d 246 (Ala.2000). Sibley did not seek certiorari in the United States Supreme Court or state or federal postconviction relief. The deadline for seeking a writ of certiorari was August 10, 2000.
On July 12, 2001, Sibley filed a Notice with the Alabama Supreme Court (hereinafter, "the Notice"). It read, in relevant part, 4 The Notice closed by emphasizing, "This Notice may not be construed as a motion or pleading, but only as a notice to the fact that we are actively appealing the convictions and sentences contrived against us in a venue Constitutionally available, and our reasons for not doing so in the Unified Judicial System." The Sibleys disclaimed any involvement in the Alabama court system and simply wished to inform the courts that their "appeal" was pending before Congress. The Alabama Supreme Court has apparently never acted on this filing.
August 10, 2001 was the deadline established by 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d)(1) for Sibley to file a federal petition for a writ of habeas corpus. Following this deadline, he filed a variety of additional notices with the Alabama Supreme Court, which can only be described as rambling and bizarre.
Finally, six days before his scheduled execution, on November 1, 2002, Sibley filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus and a motion for stay of execution with the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama. The district court stayed his execution to determine whether the habeas petition — Sibley's first — had been filed within AEDPA's one-year statute of limitations. See 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d)(1). It ultimately concluded that the petition was untimely.
On appeal, Sibley raises three issues. First, he contends that he was entitled to statutory tolling of AEDPA's statute of limitations under 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d)(2). Second, he maintains that, because he is raising a claim of actual innocence, it would be unconstitutional to apply AEDPA's statute of limitations to him. Finally, he claims that his death sentence should be vacated based on the Supreme Court's decision in Ring v. Arizona, 536 U.S. 584, 122 S.Ct. 2428, 153 L.Ed.2d 556 (2002). We reject these claims as they are wholly without the slightest trace of redeeming merit.
AEDPA contains a one-year statute of limitations for filing a federal habeas petition, which in this case began running on August 10, 2000, the deadline for filing a petition for certiorari with the United States Supreme Court. See 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d)(1)(A). Under this provision, Sibley's presumptive deadline for filing a habeas petition was August 10, 2001. He did not file his petition until November 1, 2002, making it untimely.
The statute provides that this limitation period may be tolled during any time in which "a properly filed application for State post-conviction or other collateral review with respect to the pertinent judgment or claim is pending...." Id. § 2244(d)(2). Sibley contends that his July 12, 2001 Notice to the Alabama Supreme Court, filed a month before his deadline for seeking federal habeas relief, constitutes a properly filed application for State post-conviction or collateral review that triggered tolling under § 2244(d)(2). Because the Alabama Supreme Court has never acted on that filing, he maintains that it is still pending, and so the limitation period for filing his federal habeas petition is still in abeyance. As a result, he argues, his November 1, 2002 federal habeas petition was timely.
The question before us is whether the 2001 Notice Sibley filed with the Alabama Supreme Court constitutes "a properly filed application for State post-conviction or other collateral review" that tolled the statute of limitations for filing a federal habeas petition. This encompasses three separate inquiries: (1) whether Sibley's Notice was an "application for State post-conviction or other collateral review" at all, (2) if so, whether it was "filed", and (3) if so, whether it was filed "properly."
Beginning with the first step of our analysis, we conclude that Sibley's filing did not toll § 2244(d)(1)'s statute of limitations because it did not even constitute "an application for State post-conviction or other collateral review." Three separate and independently adequate reasons support this conclusion. First, the Notice did not actually request relief from the court from Sibley's execution. The simple fact that Sibley mailed something to the court is surely insufficient to trigger § 2244(d)(2)'s tolling provision. By definition, the defining factor of an application for review is that it seeks review. As the First Circuit has held,
Giving the term "application" its natural meaning, a filing that purports to be an application for State post-conviction or other collateral review with respect to the pertinent judgment or claim must set forth the grounds upon which it is based, and must state the relief desired; it must attack collaterally the relevant conviction or sentence.
Voravongsa v. Wall, 349 F.3d 1, 6 (1st Cir.2003). As far as § 2244(d)(2) is concerned, Sibley's notice is the legal equivalent of a greeting card — a nice gesture, but not enough to toll the deadline for filing a federal habeas petition.
Second, even if we do construe the Notice as implicitly requesting review or relief of some sort, we still cannot in good faith view it as an "application for post-conviction or other relief" because it does not even attempt to make a good faith effort to offer at least a potentially plausible or coherent basis for granting Sibley relief. To take an extreme case, a document captioned "Application for Post-Conviction or Other Relief," which contained nothing more than the phrase "Let me out!," would not trigger § 2244(d)(2)'s tolling provisions. Instead, the document must contain something vaguely approaching legitimate, relevant, coherent legal analysis.
In Ford v. Moore, 296 F.3d 1035, 1038 (11th Cir.2002), we held that a filing will be considered an application for state post-conviction review sufficient to toll AEDPA's statute of limitations "whether the basis of the attack [it contains] is grounded in federal or state law." One fair inference of this holding is that where a petitioner fails to include any meaningful federal or state legal analysis, we need not consider his filing an application for state post-conviction review.
This is not to say that a document, particularly a pro se pleading, which we construe liberally, must necessarily even successfully state a claim to constitute an application for review. All we are holding is that there is an outer limit to the nonsense a petitioner may include in a purported "application for post-conviction or other relief" and still have it count as such. Ramblings about how Sibley is not a "serf," is not "in trade or business with any enemy of the Constitutional United States," does not have a social security number, does not believe in self-representation yet rejects all court-appointed attorneys, and for unspecified reasons was somehow beyond the jurisdiction of any Alabama court, are insufficient for a court to consider something a legitimate filing. This is by no means a high standard; we simply believe Congress enacted § 2244(d)(2) to allow the deadline for federal filings to be tolled when a prisoner legitimately pursues state remedies in good faith, and did not intend it to be triggered simply because a prisoner mailed nonsense to a state court.5
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